[…]I’m a secular animist. I believe that all living things are embued with a spirit. Not something demonic or angelic. Just some form of “spirit.” Maybe it comprises dark matter or dark energy. Or something even less known. More ephemeral. I don’t know. This “religion” of mine is deeply personal and private. There’s no scripture, no rituals, no preachers, no slaughtering of the infidels, no seeking of tax breaks, no blasphemy and no schisms since, so far as I know, I’m the sole adherent …

Like Meteor Blades (the author of the quoted diary) I came to this “faith” after a long journey through other, more “established” religious points of view (Wicca, Zen, Quakerism — so you see why the quote marks), and most recently came to calling myself atheist, but, to some extent that was a firm rejection of all that passes for religion in this all-too-immoral country.

Before that I adamantly protested that I didn’t have a label, and didn’t need one. Maybe I was wrong about that last part, since MB’s diary and the term “secular animist” made me happy — the way I feel when I hear about or see an act of selfless human kindness, or see a cat praising the sun with complete stillness, or see what unexpected “spirituality” science reveals about the universe. It felt right and gave me context.

I’m actually fascinated by religion and by what people believe in and how this does or doesn’t affect their life choices, whether it should or shouldn’t, etc. i look back and my haphazard blogging, here and elsewhere, and a great percentage of it is about religion in one way or another — mostly how hypocritical most “people of faith” are, and how little time they spend thinking about the subject in any meaningful way. Mostly they want to be told what the truth is, and they don’t seem interested in passing it through their mind, their experience, or, assuming they actually believe what they say they believe, they don’t seem to be bringing that truth out through their voice, their hands and their heart.

So really, I’m as obsessed about religious matters as most other Americans. Damn, now I’m back to being bummed. I’ll have to comfort myself with the fact that, as usual, I come to that obsession from an unconventional direction.